The Charlotte News

Saturday, August 9, 1947

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Howard Hughes told the War Investigating Subcommittee that he had determined to provide entertainment to Army officers and other important Government officials after he heard that they hated him for being "stuck up", referring specifically to officers in charge of Air Force Procurement at Wright Field near Dayton. Senator Homer Ferguson then demanded that Mr. Hughes identify these officials, and when he said that he could not at the time, Senator Ferguson adjourned the hearing until Monday. Mr. Hughes had, in response to questioning, specifically excluded General Hap Arnold, whom he regarded as honorable, from this group of officers. He said that ill feeling toward him had developed because one of the Hughes Aircraft employees had protested to Wright Field that Lockheed was receiving preference in wartime contracts, and that politics had played a role in letting the contract for the P-38.

Under questioning by Senator Ferguson, Mr. Hughes acknowledged that he frequently flew and registered in hotels under aliases, such as "J. B. Alexander", to avoid being bothered.

Secretary of State Marshall sent a note to the French saying that the U.S. would meet with France and Britain to discuss increasing the level of industry in the British-American zone of Germany.

In Berlin, U.S. agents were investigating the mysterious disappearance of a collection of German crown jewels. A stepson of the Kaiser, Prince Ferdinand, said that the value of the collection's 29 missing items was two million dollars, 40 percent of the value of the whole collection. He placed blame on the Russians, as the jewels had been smuggled out of the Russian occupation zone by a friend of the Prince. American criminal investigators placed the value at more than half a million dollars and the value of the whole collection at about one million.

The jewels belonged to Ferdinand's mother, Princess Hermine, widow of Kaiser Wilhelm II. She had died the previous Thursday in the Russian zone of Germany and a friend of the Prince had taken the jewels to him in the American zone. The missing jewels then disappeared from a trunk in the possession of the Prince. He stated that he maintained only two keys to the trunk and kept both with him on a single string. He had lost one of the keys, and that night, noticed that the 29 jewels were missing. The Prince told his story after being administered truth serum by a doctor from Wiesbaden.

In Rangoon, Burma, six men were selected from a lineup as suspects in the killing of Burmese leader U Aung San and eight fellow members of the Burma Executive Council on July 19. Also arrested was former Burmese Premier U Saw and members of his Myochit Party.

William P. Odom, attempting to cut in half the late Wiley Post's round-the-world solo flight record of 186 hours established in 1933, had landed his converted A-26 bomber, the "Reynolds Bombshell", at Yowota Airport near Tokyo after 48 hours and 35 minutes since leaving Chicago. He had decided, based on favorable weather conditions, to skip a scheduled stop four hours earlier at Shanghai to permit more time for readiness of the plane for the Pacific crossing.

Britons were upset at the decision the previous day of the Motion Picture Association of America to halt the export of American films to Britain because of the import tax imposed by Britain which would take 75 percent of the films' profits. The action had made banner headlines throughout Britain. The U.S. film industry had reportedly made 400 million dollars annually from Britain, of which 332 million dollars had been taken in taxes, promotional costs, and operating expenses of exhibiters. American films comprised about 80 percent of British fare and were a chief form of escape from the economic troubles from which Britons were suffering. Britain had a six-month supply of American films already on hand.

Chester Cowdin of Universal Films stated to a press conference in London that the confiscatory tax might sow the seeds of disunity between America and Britain, that Americans were very resentful of the action.

Many British theaters were expected to have to shut down because of the MPAA ban.

Corn reached record levels on the Chicago Board of Trade, in response to continuing hot, dry weather in the Midwest. The price hit a peak of $2.38.75 for September futures, the highest in 99 years for any future. Cash corn hit a record also of $2.48. Wheat and oats also were strong.

Twenty miles north of Los Angeles in Big Tujunga Canyon, the worst forest and brush fire of the season had occurred, killing three people, including two firefighters and an elderly person who died of a heart attack at the sight of the approach of the fire, which engulfed nearly 4,000 acres of watershed.

Off the Gulf Coast of Florida, the "red tide" of dead fish washed up anew onto the beaches, causing health officials to issue warnings to stay out of the surf to avoid getting a rash caused by the glob of dead fish, spanning an estimated 60 by 30 miles, floating up the coast at five miles per day. An organism so small that fifteen million could be found in a quart of water was believed by marine biologists to be the cause of the kill. Hundreds of tons of fish, some still flapping, had washed ashore this date at Madeira Beach. Other beaches reported similar situations. Many summer tourists had canceled their vacations because of the problem.

Come on down. We'll have a free fish fry at night on the beaches. Salt them down a bit and you will hardly smell them at all.

In the fifth week of the seven-week News amateur photo contest, a Durham housewife won the $5 first prize with a picture of a young girl with a dog—or maybe a wolf. A picture of a girl blowing bubbles at the round-the-world solo flight record attempt of Mr. Odom garnered the second place award. She obviously thought little of the feat. The second-place photographer had already won two other prizes in the contest.

The pictures were selected from 305 entries from 145 photographers. The total submissions numbered 1,550, from 950 photographers, thus far in the contest, vying for the $25 grand prize and the chance to compete nationally for up to $1,500.

Professor Niels Bohr would host an "Atomic Congress" in Copenhagen in September at the Institute of Theoretic Physics. Scientists from several countries were invited.

Charlie Markham of The News tells on the local news front page of the century-old Rock Springs Camp Meeting in Lincoln County, set for the next day.

On the editorial page, "More Pep for Democratic Primary" tells of young Democrats in Mecklenburg County trying to energize the North Carolina Democratic primaries by backing G.I. Democrats and others who were independent of the party machinery.

It would be difficult, however, to make the primary in a one-party state substitute for a two-party system. The experiment by the young Democrats therefore needed to be approached with caution, lest bitter factionalism become the result, as in the past when such independent slates of candidates were introduced.

The young Democrats had abandoned the G.I. label as it had suggested special interest.

"Team Play Is What the City Wants" finds the controversy between the Parks & Recreation Commission and the City Council over control of the Armory-Auditorium to have suggested that division of authority, with retention of the traditional role of Parks & Recreation, was the better course.

"Let's Have No Fight over Fritz" remarks on the decision earlier in the week by the State Board of Education to strip the teaching credential from R. L. Fritz, principal at the Hudson School in Caldwell County, because of his unusual method of accounting, under which he had paid substitute teachers not on the payroll so that they would reimburse the money and he could then use it to pay regular teachers for overtime duty to keep the short-staffed school open. He had also been ordered to repay the $1,641.19 in issue.

School principals and friends of Mr. Fritz were planning to petition the Board to reconsider the decision. It counsels, however, that they not try to put pressure on the Board as that might backfire.

His supporters questioned the authority of the Board to revoke his certificate and also protested that the penalty was excessive.

The editorial asserts that the Board was doing its duty and that widespread sympathy for Mr. Fritz could undermine the lesson that there were no loopholes for educators entrusted with public funds. The resulting controversy could have an adverse effect on the schools, especially as Mr. Fritz was the newly elected president of the North Carolina Education Association.

It concludes, however, that under the circumstances, the Board could wisely decide to restore his teaching certificate without losing face, leaving the question of his future employment to the Caldwell County School Board, where the issue properly belonged.

A piece by W. T. Bost of the Greensboro Daily News, titled "OK for Bob, Not for Bill", finds it not good advice that Senator William B. Umstead try to spice up his personality by emulating former Senator Robert Rice Reynolds. The effort would ill serve him. He was not made for the lively part and, furthermore, were he to attempt it, Senator Reynolds would likely return to politics and then there would be two "Bobs", one too many—or, as Mr. Bost must have meant, two too many.

We have tried and failed, incidentally, to find the fable of George Ade from Fables in Slang, referenced in the piece, involving the man who sought to compete with his rival in love, a rhapsodic singer, and was not suited to the part. Perhaps, you will have better success in locating it.

Drew Pearson tells of the poor schools in one of the wealthiest counties of the nation, Montgomery County in Maryland, where Mr. Pearson lived. Recently, citizens had met with County Government officials to air their grievances about the overcrowded schools. The response was that there were not enough funds to expand one of the schools. At the same time, the officials announced that the road which passed in front of the school would be repaved, at a cost of $130,000, twice that for the proposed new addition to the school.

Communities all over the nation faced the same conditions. Educating children was more important than maintaining good roads. Seventeen million war babies had been born between 1941 and 1946, an increase of 50 percent in the birth rate. They would begin going to school in the fall of 1947, increasing the overcrowded conditions.

He next tells of World Bank president John J. McCloy about to recommend a loan of 200 million dollars to the Dutch Government, notwithstanding the problems in the Dutch East Indies, where fighting with the Indonesians had just been halted by order of the U.N. Security Council after 15 days. In the past, the Bank had refused loans to Poland on the basis of its politics. The Dutch situation appeared as the first occasion into which the bank would inject itself as an instrument of diplomacy. It would be interpreted throughout the Pacific as evidence that the U.S. supported imperialism, giving ground to Russian propaganda.

He tells of Senator Owen Brewster being interrupted by Senator Claude Pepper as the former met with two lobbyists for Pan American Airways in his Senate office. Senator Pepper was planning to attend a closed meeting to ascertain the origin on the War Investigating Committee of news leaks from closed meetings and hearings. Senator Brewster told him that the meeting had been called off. Mr. Pearson quips that Senator Brewster apparently was holding his own private meeting with Pan Am lobbyists to determine the source of the leaks.

He relates that new Secretary of War Kenneth Royall would run for the gubernatorial nomination in North Carolina.

Former General Benny Myers had pulled strings to try to stop the War Investigating Committee from probing his wartime profits of $120,000 on one stock market transaction.

President Truman hoped that Congressman Estes Kefauver would run for the Senate in Tennessee against Tom Stewart. Mr. Kefauver was considered one of the most brilliant members of Congress. Mr. Stewart was not.

Paul W. Ward, in the sixth installment of his series for the Baltimore Sun, collectively titled "Life in the Soviet Union", tells of religion in Russia. While it was regarded as a "survival of capitalism", no organized campaign against religion was presently taking place in Russia and no evidence suggested that it ever had been. An active campaign against religion had transpired, however, between 1917 and 1942. But now, the leaders in the Kremlin believed that religion was useful in aid of maintenance of control over Russia's masses.

Yet, the authorities had not removed all vestiges of control over religion and those which had been removed could be easily restored. The authorities had also intensified anti-religious teaching of Soviet youth.

The 1917 Revolution had proclaimed the principles of freedom of religion and separation of church and state, the second being realized, the first not, save for the fact that Russians were free to worship as they pleased provided they could find churches in which to worship and priests not afraid to conduct services.

In the 1936 Constitution, the restrictions on the clergy were eased, providing them with the same rights as other Russians, including the right to equal rations and the right to vote. But not until the German invasion of Russia in June, 1941 was there an easing by the Kremlin of hostility to organized religion, becoming tolerant of the Russian Orthodox Church and some other religious groups. This movement acted to counter the Nazi propaganda effort that they would liberate Russians from their atheist masters. All openly anti-religious newspapers then ceased publication and the anti-religious museum in Moscow closed. Anti-religious propaganda stopped completely by September, 1941, and in 1942, the first religious publication in Russia since 1929 began.

In September, 1943, the Kremlin was opened to a delegation of clergymen to meet with Josef Stalin. Shortly thereafter, the Orthodox Church was permitted to hold a council to elect a Patriarch.

Presently, there were 25 churches in Moscow, a city with a population of seven million.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the intention of Robert Hannegan to resign as DNC chairman in September because of health issues. Until recently, his successor in the post was thought likely to be Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson, the favorite of President Truman for the position. Mr. Anderson would not have been so pro-labor as Mr. Hannegan and would thus have appealed to Southerners, was recommended by former Speaker Sam Rayburn for the job. But Secretary Anderson wanted to run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Carl Hatch of New Mexico, and so would not become the chairman of the party.

Others mentioned for the position were Judge and former Senator Sherman Minton, to become Supreme Court Justice, and Sam Jackson, the chairman of the 1944 convention. Judge Minton would appeal to Northern Democrats for his record favorable to the New Deal. Mr. Jackson, also of Indiana, was favored by Southern conservatives.

The Alsops find it remarkable that the President had been inclined to put Mr. Anderson in the position as it would anger labor, whose support he had obtained anew, including that of the formerly angry A. F. Whitney of the Brotherhood of Trainmen, when the President vetoed Taft-Hartley. They find it problematic that he would risk losing that newly garnered support by favoring a DNC chairman who was not so sympathetic to labor.

They conclude that the quirks of the President's character, however, could not be discounted. In principle, he was pro-labor, but in practice, he did not care for labor leaders, encouraged in that direction by Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder and the President's brash military aide, Maj. General Harry Vaughan.

A letter writer compliments the August 7 editorial which advocated banning the bums of W. Trade Street in Charlotte. For a long time, she says, the situation had been a disgrace to the city. A woman did not feel safe walking home by the parade of bums.

The Hotel Charlotte, she insists, was the most popular bums' roost in the city. And they extended from Mint Street to the Square. Bums, bums, everywhere.

You could see them every Friday at the office of the Federal welfare collecting hard-working taxpayers' dollars to feed their bum faces. And then they made a bee-line for the pool rooms and the front of the Hotel Charlotte and such inviting places.

She hopes the editorial would awaken the Chief of Police to the problem.

Hang 'em. Worthless scum slime. Bringing in the ghosts and the goblins.

A letter from A. W. Black, reverting to his usual double-talk, tells of library patrons having the effrontery to expect the library to have esoteric knowledge at their fingertips, when called upon for it by "certain self-evaluated literary connoisseurs, depicting an attitude of superiority so revolting as to produce intellectual nausea". He counsels following the "three-phase rule of determining requirements correctly expressing request, receiving same with courteous expressions of appreciation."

A letter writer again finds the Constitution being violated by allowing "draft dodgers, profiteers, and monopolies to go unpunished". The Reverend Joseph A. Rabun of McRae, Ga., had blamed Herman Talmadge for his removal from his church, that Mr. Talmadge and his henchmen were bigots using the uninformed to advance his political agenda.

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